“Negro, Feroz y Valiente”: Black Mexican Revolutionaries who Anchored Freedom for Black Americans in 19th Century Mexico.

• In Event: Slavery and War(fare) in the 18th and 19th Century Black Atlantic World

Abstract

On September 24, 1816, a royalist report announced the death of Ciriaco Cruz Flores. Ciriaco was an insurgente leader of the Mexican forces in Acapulco, during the Mexican Revolutionary War against the Spanish. The report announced that, like Ciriaco, “all of the dead, like all of the injured” Mexican insurgents were all “de esa misma clase: Black, Fierce and Brave.”1 The Mexican Revolution was fought for over 10 years and was a war won by Black Mexican fighters (free and formerly enslaved) who had vested interests in the liberation of Mexico. While the most recognized Black Mexican actors who secured independence are José María Morelos and Vicente Guerrero, countless others have largely remained unacknowledged like Ciriaco, Pedro Roxas, Isidoro Montesdeoca, among countless more. To them, Mexico owes not only its independence but the anchors that propelled abolition within the country. This paper argues that Black Mexican revolutionaries beyond being, as renowned historian Theodore Vincent long argued, “the Blacks who freed Mexico,” most importantly were the foundational actors who set consequential processes for Black freedom, and the destruction of chattel slavery, in and for early Mexico. It explores the lives of a number of Black Mexican revolutionaries to better understand how they influenced or spearheaded liberation processes, and/or practices, that later empowered and served, if not facilitated, Black Americans to claim freedom on Mexican soil.

Author

• María Esther Hammack, Ohio State University